Research on sex offender laws and their effects on people and society

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Click on a question number to be taken to the answer.

Yes, they do.

	11-year-old registered “sex offender”

What used to be called “playing doctor” for young children or thought of as normal sexual experimentation for older teens is now enough to get a kid arrested, taken away in handcuffs, put in juvenile jail (or sometimes even adult prison), subjected to draconian psychological “treatment,” and put on a sex offender registry, often for the rest of his or her life! This is not just for aggressive or violent behavior, but also for innocent, consensual play among giggling kids. See the SOLR report, Criminalizing Child’s Play, for data on the formal admonishment of children as young as four, and criminal prosecution of first graders, for innocent sexual behavior.

See also Q&A # 13 for information on the youngest children on the registries.
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Note posted on August 24, 2007, updated January 28, 2009.

A four-year-old has been charged with sexual harassment for hugging his teacher, and two first graders have been prosecuted for sodomy as a result of innocent, mutual play with each other.

Here are some example cases of young children being formally admonished or legally prosecuted for innocent and playful sexual activity:

• 4-year-old suspended after hugging teacher's aide, Associated Press, December 11, 2006
• Girl, 5, Forced To Apologize For Hugging Classmate — Parents Looking For New School For Girl — WCVB-TV (Boston, Massachusetts), April 5, 2006
• Boy, 5, Accused Of Sex Harassment For Pinching Girl’s Butt — Boy’s Father Says He Can’t Explain Term — NBC4.com (Maryland), December 20, 2006
• Kindergartners Accused of Having Sex at School, KGBT-TV (Harlingen, Texas), April 19, 2005
• 6-Year-Old Boys Caught Having Sex At Day Camp, WESH-TV (Orlando, Florida), July 11, 2006
• 6-Year-Old Accused Of Sexual Harassment — Boy Accused Of Putting Fingers In Girl’s Waistband — KMGH-TV (Denver, Colorado), February 8, 2006
• Boy, 6, accused of sex abuse, The Age (newspaper) (Melbourne, Australia), September 19, 2007
• First Graders Face Sodomy Charges, WFIE-TV (Evansville, Indiana), February 2005

Note that while in the case reported by KGBT-TV, authorities were content with giving the boys counseling and school suspension, prosecutors in the case reported by WFIE-TV actually filed first degree sodomy charges against two first graders who were “found in the bathroom performing sexual acts.”

For many more cases like these, see the SOLR report, Criminalizing Child’s Play.
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Note posted on January 10, 2008, updated January 28, 2009.

The public registries in the US include children as young as eleven years old.

	11-year-old registered “sex offender”

The photograph on the right was taken — without the bar across the boy’s eyes — from an actual entry on the sex offender registry. We do not provide a link here to the entry in order to protect the privacy of the boy and his family. Along with his full name and street address, the registry gives his date of birth and date first registered, indicating he was put on the registry at age eleven. It also indicates that his crime was “Aggravated indecent liberties with a child,” which, in the boy’s state, is a felony that includes consensual sexual touching of another child under 14 years of age.

This boy is one of six eleven-year-olds who were found in an analysis in 2007 of the registry data for four US states (Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, and Kansas) that include juveniles and dates of birth on the public registry. That analysis showed almost a thousand sex offenders under the age of 18 on the public registries in just those four states. See the SOLR report, Criminalizing Child’s Play, for more information on that analysis.

There is also a case in England of an 11-year-old boy being put on the sex offender registry for an offense committed when he was ten. See Boy, 11, on sex register, Liverpool Echo (United Kingdom), May 12, 2006.
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Note posted on January 10, 2008, updated January 28, 2009.

Sometimes it is, but often it is not. Sometimes the children's behavior is comletely appropriate to their normal age and development and any such counseling may be harmful for both so-called “perpetrators” and “victims.” Even when the children's behavior was overly aggressive or otherwise inappropriate, the type of psychological treatment used is often abusive and harmful to the further development of the children. In particular, juveniles whose feelings or actions are considered deviant are often subjected to the same aversive therapies once used to “cure” gay men.

The psychological treatments used on children who are caught being sexual are discussed in the Treatment section of Ethical Treatment for All Youth. Abusive treatments that were commonly used on homosexuals in the 1950s and are currently used on children are discussed on that site under Arousal Reconditioning.
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Note posted on January 10, 2008, updated January 28, 2009.

There are two questions to consider in relation to sex offender registration of juveniles.

• Is it right to use the legal system to punish children and teenagers for engaging in consensual sexual activity with other kids? After punishing them, does it make any sense to put these kids on a public registry, warning the community that they are dangerous?
• In cases where kids used force or violence in sexual ways, is it right to punish them much more severely than others who used force and violence nonsexually? Kids who bully their peers, set fire to buildings, or even kill somebody are punished, counseled, and then released into the community with no public scrutiny of their whereabouts or dealings.

For nonsexual, violent offenses handled in juvenile court, the records are sealed after a period of time and the former offenders can work as teachers, doctors, or police officers. Nobody needs to know about their youthful crimes. But if those crimes involved touching the genitals of another child, either with permission or not, then the criminal records are, far from being sealed, broadcast on the Internet for all the world to see. When juvenile sex offenders reach adulthood, they can never take jobs that involve working with children and in some states may be barred from living with their own children, should they be lucky enough to find someone willing to have a family with them.
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Note posted on January 28, 2009, updated January 28, 2009.

The New York Times reported in 2007 that two states have civil commitment inmates as young as 18 years old. To be in civil commitment by the age of 18, one must have committed the associated offenses as a juvenile. In six other states, the youngest civil commitment inmates are aged 21 or less. Because of the time that it takes for a person to become committed, it is likely at those ages as well that the offenses involved were committed entirely in the juvenile years. See A Profile of Civil Commitment Around the Country, New York Times, March 3, 2007.
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Note posted on January 10, 2008, updated January 28, 2009.